Robocod

Genre

Arcade Platform

Developer / Publisher

Millennium Interactive

Released

1991

Media

1 x

Rating

Graphics:

8.0

Sound:

8.0

Gameplay:

9.0

Overall:

8.0

Reviewed by

ndial

Robocod (or as fully titled, James Pond II: Codename RoboCod), is the sequel to James Pond game, now with enhanced visuals and greater fun! One of the best platformers of its kind initially released on Amiga, ST/STE (in 1991) and later on a variety of platforms, including the Commodore 64, PC (1993), <a href='http://retroshowcase.com/index.php?id=GameGear&p=games&gameid=45&model=SEGA%20Game%20Gear ' class=' tableData'>Sega Game Gear</a> (1993), Sega Mega Drive/Genesis (1991), Sega Master System (1993), Nintendo SNES, Nintendo GBA, PlayStation and more!

Review

It's nearly two years since its predecessor "James Pond" first arrived (back in 1990) initially on the Amiga computers, scoring a massive 9 out of 10 in all major video-game magazines of the time. The story begins with Dr Maybe (!) who's holding a toy factory to ransom in the North Pole (Santa's toy-factory actually), intent on causing a present-less Christmas for everyone! The nasty piece of work has been manufacturing a range of lethal playthings in an attempt to take his revenge from the previous game story. He'll succeed too, unless James (our little fish-Bond hero) steps in! Equipped with a high-tech robot suit, it enables him to expand his torso to preposterous lengths of height! This comes in extremely handy during gameplay as very often you have to reach ledges and grip on with your ... fishy fingers! Find loads of power-ups too. Hostile creatures lurk in these levels, and they come in many forms. There are no weapons in the game, so James must jump on them to defeat them. The whole action takes place in rooms fully decorated with huge toys, candies etc. Ok, the action is stereotypical platform mayhem and basically you've got to run, jump, squash, stretch (!) and generally splash your fins around, defeating baddies and killing massive mothers every two stages or so, in a joyful and way colorful wrap!

The graphics are pretty good, colorful and the action is incredibly fast and smooth. The game visuals are pretty nice with colorful backgrounds and nicely animated sprites. The Amiga (OCS) version is al little faster more responsive in times while there are a few more graphical touches compared to the PC and ST versions. Note that the Amiga AGA version is way better than any other 16bit, as it uses advanced color techniques, more detail and even faster gameplay! The sound is great featuring several high quality in-game tunes as well as a lot of sampled sound FX similar to the Amiga AGA (found also on the PC version though of lower sampling quality).

Amiga 500/500+

CPU: Motorola MC68000 7.16 MHzMEMORY: 512KB of Chip RAM (OCS chipset - A500), 512 KB of Slow RAM or Trapdoor RAM can be added via the trapdoor expansion, up to 8 MB of Fast RAM or a Hard drive can be added via the side expansion slot. The ECS chipset (A500+) offered 1MB on board to 2MB (extended) of Chip RAM.GRAPHICS: The OCS chipset (Amiga 500) features planar graphics (codename Denise custom chip), with up to 5 bit-planes (4 in hires), allowing 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 color screens, from a 12bit RGB palette of 4096 colors. Resolutions varied from 320x256 (PAL, non-interlaced, up to 4096 colors) to 640x512 (interlace, up to 4 colors). Two special graphics modes where also included: Extra Half Bright with 64 colors and HAM with all 4096 colors on-screen. The ECS chipset models (Amiga 500+) offered same features but also extra high resolution screens up to 1280x512 pixels (4 colors at once).SOUND: (Paula) 4 hardware-mixed channels of 8-bit sound at up to 28 kHz. The hardware channels had independent volumes (65 levels) and sampling rates, and mixed down to two fully left and fully right stereo outputs